Cutting rhythms in Chicago and Cabaret: razzle-dazzle editing style keeps a pair of energetically conceived musicals on their toes.
Cineaste › Vol. 34 Nbr. 2, March 2009
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Cutting rhythms in Chicago and Cabaret: razzle-dazzle editing style keeps a pair of energetically conceived musicals on their toes.
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Editors take pride in their craft being invisible to audiences and their artistry being intuitive. But, as technology and film production practices change, editors need people to be able to see what good editing is and they need to be able to say more than, "You just know when it works," or their art and craft may be threatened. If editors cannot articulate what makes edits, even "invisible" ones, good, then the job of editing might as well be done by someone cheaper, for example the director's brother who is good with computers. So the question is: What is the special, particular skill that editors have that the director's brother does not? What have they implicitly trained themselves to do through years of editing practice that no one else on the crew can do as well? My proposition is this: that the editor's particular skill is the shaping of movement. The edits may be "invisible," but the movement of story, the movement of emotion, and the movement of images and sounds are not, and what the editors does, which no one else can do as well, is organize the flow of these three kinds of movement. The notion of editing being an art of shaping movement no doubt derives, for me, from my background as a dancer and choreographer. From there it found its way, via my doctoral thesis and...See the full content of this document
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